Why I Shoot in Colour
By Bev Anne Moynham
When I see people get all excited about B&W photos I wonder what they see that I don’t. It is well known that people see colours differently and maybe some people who prefer B&W just don’t see the same things that I do. In a textbook for artists on the subject of colour the author Becky Koenig describes colour as “A visual sensation caused by the components of light either transmitted or reflected to the receptors in our eye”. She also says that “color actually is an illusion caused by reception of the light wavelengths by our eye, which forms colours in our brain”. Colour is not an inherent property of an object — it is a function of the receptors that trigger colour sensations in our brains. And these receptors can be different in different people.
Colour can evoke different feelings in different people. This may depend on the culture in which one was raised, life experiences, or just some inborn personal preference. For instance, Red can represent everything from passion, excitement, and love to violence, aggression, and embarrassment depending on the circumstances. The absence of colour can also evoke feelings which will also vary from person to person.
Despite all this theory I still wonder what attracts me to colour. Of course, like anyone, I do have my favourite colours and there are very few colours that I don’t like, at least when they are in their proper context (which is also purely subjective). I even like colour that has no real context — just abstract colours — colour for colour’s sake! I have been known to shoot something terribly uninteresting as a subject just because of the colours and then take it into Photoshop and play with the filters to get some colourful abstracts.
My first camera was a Brownie Hawkeye and colour film was not readily available at the time (about 70 years ago) so all my first photographs were in B&W. It wasn’t until the mid-1960s that I was able to shoot in colour. Getting colour film developed was too expensive (especially for a teenager) so I followed my father’s example and switched to slides. I loved my colour pictures and never intentionally shot in B&W after that. Somewhere in my mind, I associate B&W with lack — they lack colour and I lacked the money to produce colour prints back then.
I do agree that some photos, especially portraiture, can be very good in B&W. There are 3 or 4 pictures I have taken of family members that I like in B&W but they are very few (I don’t shoot people very often). However, most of my photos would be very boring without their colour. The beautiful blue domes of the cathedral in Cuenca, Ecuador would be rather dull, the rocks surrounding the Red Rock Amphitheatre in Colorado would just be rocks, and the pink dogwood blossoms from the park in Parksville would be without their unique colour.
There is no “right” or “wrong” here. It depends on the subject that the person behind the camera sees and wants to capture. And, as I see it, the subjects of most of my photographs require colour to capture their essence. Therefore, I will continue to shoot in colour.
*All images courtesy of Bev Anne Moynham